IEEE Communications and Information Theory Societies’ Joint Paper Award
Recipient: Giuseppe Caire
Giuseppe Caire of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) and co-authors Nihar Jindal, Mari Kobayashi and Niranjay Ravindran, won the 2011 IEEE Communications and Information Theory (ITS) Societies’ Joint Paper Award, for "Multiuser Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output Achievable Rates With Downlink Training and Channel State Feedback (June 2011)." This is Caire and Jindal’s second such award from the society. An IEEE Fellow, active member of IEEE ITS and its current president, Caire was associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Communications (1998-2001) and held the same position on IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (2001-2003). He won the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society’s Jack Neubauer Best System Paper Award in 2003.
IBEX Group Achievement Award, National Air and Space Administration
Recipient: Michael Gruntman
The Department of Astronautical Engineering’s Michael Gruntman is a co-recipient of the 2011 National Air and Space Administration’s (NASA) Group Achievement Award for his work on the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) program’s Science Team. The team’s most recent success entailed using "energetic neutral atom emission detectors to image the solar systems interaction with the local interstellar medium," according to the Southwest Research Institute, the IBEX research group's home base. The citation notes "efforts which have contributed substantially to NASA’s mission." Gruntman is also currently a co-investigator on NASA’s Two Wide-Angle Imaging Neutral-Atom Spectrometers - or TWINS - orbit mission team. He won the Luigi Napolitano Award from the International Academy of Astronautics in 2006, for his book entitled "Blazing The Trail: The Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry" (AIAA, Reston, VA, 2004).
CAREER Award, National Science Foundation
Recipient: Qiang Huang
Viterbi’s most recent recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Award is Qiang Huang of the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. Huang's is the first CAREER grant awarded for use in the NSF's Manufacturing Enterprise Systems program, an initiative supporting research in the design, planning, and control of operations in manufacturing enterprises. He will continue work on Integrated Nanomanufacturing (NM) and Nanoinformatics for core academic curricula. The goal is to provide undergraduate and graduate programs with improved educational uniformity and emphasis on quality control for the next generations of nanomanufacturing engineers, resulting in a sharper competitive edge in nanomanufacturing. A K-12 outreach component of the program will benefit underrepresented groups in the community. Qiang was an associate professor at the University of South Florida (2003-2009) before joining the Viteribi faculty.
Okawa Research Grant, Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications
Recipient: Bhaskar Krishnamachari
The Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications will award wireless sensor networks specialist Bhaskar Krishnamachari, associate professor and a Ming Hsieh Faculty Fellow with joint appointments in EE and Computer Science (CS), a 2011 Okawa Research Grant for his work on "Communication Network Protocols That Learn." Krishnamachari adds this to a growing list of honors, including last year's ASEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award, and selection by MIT’s Technology Review magazine last month for its 2011 TR35 List of 35 Innovators Under 35.
Special Recognition, IEEE Nanotechnology Council
Recipient: Aristides Requicha
Aristides Requicha has been recognized for his many contributions to the IEEE Nanotechnology Council. Requicha has served on "Nano's" administrative committee, as editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, and is currently vice president for publications. He also received the council’s 2010 Distinguished Service Award and was named a distinguished lecturer in 2010. The Gordon S. Marshall Professor of Computer Science with a joint appointment in EE, Requicha is founding director of USC’s Laboratory for Molecular Robotics. From 1986 to 2003, he directed the USC Programmable Automation Laboratory. Requicha is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Certificate of Appreciation for IRIS, U.S. Federal Air Marshal Service
Recipient: Milind Tambe
Milind Tambe of CS has received another certificate of appreciation, this time from the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's Federal Air Marshals (FAMS) for his work on the Intelligent Randomization in Scheduling (IRIS) airport security program, a scheduling assistant that strategically places air marshals on U.S. commercial flights, IRIS won a best paper award at the Eighth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. Tambe heads the TEAMCORE Research Group, which has created several other similar projects including ARMOR, GUARDS, and PROTECT.
Executive Committee Member, Global Engineering Deans Council
Elected: Yannis C. Yortsos
Dean Yannis C. Yortsos, holder of the Zohrab A. Kaprielian Dean's Chair, the Chester F. Dolley Professor of Petroleum Engineering and a member of the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, has been elected a member of the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) Executive Committee. The GEDC was established in Paris in 2008, at an international gathering of 20 engineering deans. The council now lists 110 deans from over 25 countries and all regions of the world. Its mission is to draw on members' strengths "for the advancement of engineering education and research," notes GEDC Chair David Garza. In his role as the USC Viterbi Dean, Yortsos has led the school onto the list of top ten engineering schools in the world, while increasing the size, diversity and quality of its faculty and raising the level of research funding to all-time highs. Earlier this year, Yortsos was elected an honorary member of the International Society of Petroleum Engineers, and of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by either organization. Dean Yortsos' term on the GEDC will begin this October and run through September 2014.
